When Do You Know You're Done
¿Cuándo sabes que has terminado?
A question about the progression from redirecting attention away from thought toward a deeper practice of tasting thought directly, and how to know when the work is complete.
When Do You Know You're Done
A question about the progression from redirecting attention away from thought toward a deeper practice of tasting thought directly, and how to know when the work is complete.
I wanted to talk about a nuance you mentioned in the meditation. I've been listening to the recorded meditations between our meetings, and the way I had been interpreting the practice of noticing thoughts was: when thoughts come in, I contemplate how they are often a distraction we choose to engage in, perhaps to avoid something that's happening now. So if I notice I'm in thought, it's not that it's bad, but I redirect back to sensation and explore what's there. I've been doing that in my daily life too, not just in meditation.
But in today's meditation, I heard another layer more clearly. I had been making a practice of it: if I'm in thought, come back to sensation, explore there. And I think part of me believed that if I got better at catching thought, I would arrive somewhere different, that I'd be more open energetically. On the other hand, I've also been exploring the question: isn't thought still, in a sense, this unknowable presence?
The thing with this work is that there are a million forms, a million practices, and some of them are useful to some degree and in some way. I'm always going to be going back and forth to meet someone where they are. If it's a group meditation, it's going to be whatever is moving in the moment. I can understand how that can be very confusing, because there can be a lot of contradiction.
The paradox of moving away from thought
What you're presenting now is a kind of paradox: if the work is always to move away from thought into sensation, then that's going to become a pattern that is limiting. There's only a half truth in that, but it's a very valid and valuable practice, especially at first.
The exploration in today's meditation, the tasting of thought, points to not needing to move away from thought into sensation. It goes a bit deeper, but you can't start there. It's very hard for somebody who barely notices the difference between thought and reality, who doesn't yet recognize thought as thought.
Recognizing thought as thought
The practice you are describing is very valuable for starting to recognize more and more the nature of thought. For most people, when you say "the future," it's reality. You're talking about something real versus something imagined. When I call the future imagined, I'm pointing to the fact that it's an aspect of mind, an aspect of thought. Whatever you can say of the future now is what you are able to imagine by predicting from what you've learned from experience, and all of that is a construct of thought. Most people will debate that.
But the more you recognize the nature of thought, the more it becomes clear: yes, that's all the future is, imagination. The nature of imagination is images, which are thoughts. Sounds I can imagine from conversations I might have tomorrow, which are thoughts. Things I might feel, which are thoughts, because they're imagined now. I can have a thought, and that thought can produce some emotion or feeling right now, so that part isn't imagined in a sense. But anything I can see of the future is imagined.
At first it's very important to start distinguishing what of what's happening now is thought. I would say a lot more than what people normally think are thoughts, are thoughts. That can go really deep. You could just take that one point: notice what is a thought to be a thought. What you think is real, notice it's actually thought. And that could go very deep. But you would usually need some guidance, because it's hard to see some things that just seem real, to explore and recognize them as thought.
From anchoring to turning around
The practice you're describing, being pulled into thought and going into sensation, starts to create that discernment, that separation from engaging with thought as something real. We get pulled into thought because something in it starts to seem more real than just thought. Going into sensation, using sensation as an anchor (the breath, the skin, perception), helps distinguish what is thought and recognize it as thought.
But at some point we can start exploring a kind of turning around, where we don't need to pull away from thought. You can just be with a stream of thought, knowing it as thought. Then you can explore allowing the stream of thought while seeing more deeply into its nature, its mechanisms. You start to recognize: whenever this kind of thing happens, I have this kind of thought activating, and it pulls me in this way. You can start feeling into the energetics of that.
As you say, thought is often helping you not be in touch with something that's happening now. So it's a valid practice to ask: what is the sensation or feeling happening now that thought is helping me manage? But at some point there is value in turning around and not pushing thought away.
If we go back into thought by making it real, that's not what I'm talking about. The tasting I'm pointing to is recognizing thought as thought and then exploring the experience of it.
I understand that distinction in my experience. This leads to my second question. I feel like I'm straddling that paradox, where the practice is useful and at times there's also a time for noticing that a thought came from nowhere and is going nowhere, opening up to resistance around it, tasting it, exploring its nature. So my other question is: at what point do you know when you're done? Because on one hand, I can taste. Tastiness is good; tastiness tastes better than imagination. I'm seeing that and going deeper into it. But at the same time, my mind interprets glimpses as something that comes out of nowhere and feels energetically different. I try to question that. You've pointed out before: what about the glimpse is still present now? There seems to be a paradox between "the tastiness is always there" and "there is a time when something shifts energetically," something that feels like a point of no return. Or maybe it's not a time, but that's what my mind makes of it.
When glimpses become irrelevant
A sign that the work is done is that it's going on its own, that there isn't anything you need to be doing. There is ease no matter what. Even if life circumstances are challenging, there's a certain deep sense of ease. That's a sign. Glimpses are no longer important or even relevant, because in a sense you're always in a kind of timeless glimpse, which is this tasting. When everything that's happening is being tasted and savored, there isn't a negative tone at the heart of it. The word savoring implies there's a pleasantness to it, no matter what's happening. Then nothing really needs to be done, because the savoring is happening on its own. You've recognized that all there is, is what is happening, and all of it can be savored. You don't need to hold it in these words; these are just my words.
All glimpses do is reveal deeper truth of what is. But once that truth is seen, what is, is always that. It's always true. The glimpse becomes irrelevant. There doesn't need to be a reconfirmation of something that was seen to be true.
Nothing threatens what you are
For example, you could say that everything can be savored. Those are words pointing to a recognition. The recognition, you could say, is: what I am is not threatened by what is. As a whole process, you could arrive at that through self-inquiry. What am I? Who am I? Where am I? Exploring that, you could recognize that what you are is not threatened, cannot be threatened, because you glimpse your true nature. In practice, what the experience looks like is that whatever is happening is welcome. It's not just welcome; it's savored, because nothing threatens what I am.
Buddhism goes about it in a different way. Self-inquiry is more of an Advaita Vedanta, nonduality practice. Buddhism approaches it by seeing the nature of self to be empty. It's just different words. What I am cannot be threatened because there's nothing I can say that I am. There isn't something that I am that can be threatened. I have to be something in order for it to be threatened. But because what I am is empty, unknowable, unknown, it cannot be threatened. Therefore, I am free to taste and savor whatever is happening. I am free to listen to the deepest callings and explore them in this life freely, savoring without any attachment to the outcome, because it doesn't matter. I have preferences for the outcome to be better than worse, and that's playful, it's fun. But in that process there's a shedding of the mechanisms of resisting, which you could call identification. Identification is just saying no to what is, in some form. The only way you can do that is by having thoughts about what is and making those thoughts be real, having them not be just thoughts.
Thank you. I feel pretty blissed out right now, so the questions don't really seem to matter. I will explore.
Thank you.